New dating services for japan people

· 07-Dec-2016 02:03

Nikukai, meaning “Meat Meeting,” is more innocent than the translation makes it sound: It’s an app designed to get groups of men and women together for Korean barbecue, which is popular in Japan.Founded by Haruka Ito, a 28-year-old Keio University graduate, blogger, and author, the site is inspired by gokon, the Japanese tradition of group blind dates, where men and women who don’t know each other meet to socialize in hopes of eventually pairing off.Yet the messages the app sends your inbox don’t sound as wholesome. Models, nursery school teachers, nurses, nutritionists, college students, office ladies [receptionists]–we’ve got them all! It quickly reassures me that “You won’t see your Facebook friends in Pairs” and “Facebook won’t show your history of searches in Pairs.” It may as well have said, “We know you’re ashamed of using our business, but don’t worry, your secret is safe with us.”“Our design is more for women,” says Takeru Kawashita, marketing chief of Pairs.“Previous deiaikei sites were made with a male mindset.” What he means is that their site is made for husband hunting.So why is the subject so touchy in Japan, a technologically hip country (their ketai cellphones surfed the Web long before our smart phones) that otherwise seems comfortable discussing sex?

Early on in the Japanese online dating scene you could never be confident the person you met on a dating site was real.But when you ask around, no one cops to having used them.The stigma around online dating is a bit surprising, since Japan needs help in that particular area.So I decide to try out Pairs, a dating application linked to Facebook that, along with Match Alarm, Niku Kai, and Yahoo Omiai, is one of the country’s most popular.As with most Japanese dating apps, women can sign up for free, while men pay ¥2,380 (roughly ) per month.